When Auburn University alumna and Opelika native Jessica “Dixie” Mills embarked on the Appalachian Trail in 2015, the most hiking she’d ever done before at once was a three-to-four-mile trek.
“I had never been on an overnight backpacking trip ever,” she said.
On Wednesday, Mills took her first steps along the 3,100-mile Continental Divide Trail, which runs from New Mexico to Montana and follows the continental divide along the Rocky Mountains. When she finishes the CDT, Mills will be one of the few hundred people to have completed the triple crown of the backpacking world: hiking the Appalachian, Pacific Crest and Continental Divide trails.
Thousands of people will be watching Mills’ five-to-six month transcontinental journey as she films her adventures for all the world to follow through her popular YouTube channel, Homemade Wanderlust.
Mills' passion for through-hiking began with a step out on a limb. Soon after graduating from Auburn with a bachelor's in biosystems engineering and a minor in agronomy and soils, she moved to Colorado and started working in the oil field. At 28 years old, Mills looked up one day and decided that she needed to make a change in her life.
“It was a good job, but I didn’t love it,” Mills said. “It wasn’t fulfilling. … All these goals and dreams that you have when you’re a little kid, it’s like, 'Why haven’t I done any of those?' So the first thing I thought of was the Appalachian Trail.”
Mills quit her job, moved back to Opelika in 2014 and then embarked on the AT in 2015.
“It was pretty scary to go from making a salary that was good to cashing in on my retirement and saying, ‘Well, I’m going to do this,’” she said.
But for Mills, the risk paid off.
The Appalachian Trail runs 2,190 miles from Georgia to Maine, traversing the Appalachian Mountains and 14 states. It took Mills about six months to complete.
“It was one of the most awesome things that I had ever done,” Mills said. “I had never felt so much like myself. … I never had necessarily a certain clique or anything like that, so whenever I got out there and I started backpacking, I’m just like, ‘Yes, this is my crowd. … These are my people.’”
Before she started, a friend of Mills had suggested that she start a vlog chronicling her trail travels, so Mills began filming and uploading videos of her adventures throughout her trip.
“It was more or less to document my journey and to have friends and family keep up with me,” Mills said. “But people started subscribing. It was crazy, and when I got done, I think I had like 1,000 subscribers.”
After the AT, Mills started her Homemade Wanderlust YouTube channel, which has grown to over 93,000 subscribers. In addition to filming her trail adventures, Mills creates how-to videos in between trips on a plethora of hiking topics. Now, through her blog, channel, an eBook, her Patreon and Amazon affiliates, Mills is able to make a living off of through-hiking.
“It’s an interesting time to be alive because you can basically monetize your passion now,” she said.
But even before her blog became popular and after completing the AT, Mills knew she didn’t want to return to a 9-to-5 job. She began thinking about hiking the Pacific Crest Trail. Mills stayed in Opelika for a year, working multiple part-time jobs doing anything from insurance inspections to bartending to substitute teaching in order to make some money. In spring of 2017, she headed west to start her second major through-hike.
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Running 2,654 miles long, the PCT winds along the West Coast from Mexico to Canada, passing through the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Along the trail, Mills faced a challenge she had not encountered before. The Sierra Nevada received historic amounts of snow in early 2017.
“I didn’t really have a whole lot of experience with backpacking in snow,” Mills said.
Snow can cover the trail path and fill rivers with water, making mountain passes and rivers dangerous to cross. Hiking alone, Mills at one point tried to cross a rushing stream.
“I got about halfway across and I was like, ‘No, if I fall right now I’m going to die, like I’m not coming out of this,’” she said. “I ended up having to turn back, and I got really upset because I had even tried it — because I had even done it — because I knew I shouldn’t be doing something like that without having some other people around.”
As she set up her tent to wait until morning, a group of four guys came upon the stream, and they were all able to cross together.
“I ended up hiking with them through pretty much the rest of California,” Mills said. “It was great. It was like I had four new brothers or something.”
Mills said it seems to always work out like that on the trail.
“They always say the trail provides,” she said. “Whether it’s people or supplies, like maybe you need a certain item of gear or you ran out of fuel and now you’re going to have to eat a cold dinner, there’s always somehow somebody (who) pops up and it’s like, ‘Oh, you need that, well here you go.’ It’s just amazing how it works out.”
Besides the river crossing, Mills had a close encounter on the edge of a boulder on the PCT and a black bear bluff-charged her on the AT. Though she’s had her fair share of nerve-wracking experiences, she’s had plenty of equally unforgettable good ones. Some of her most memorable days are the ones where she received “trail magic.”
“Trail magic is where these people that we call trail angels, they know about the trail and that community, so they make a point to come out and support the hikers,” she said.
The trail angels will often park their cars at an accessible point along the trail, such as at a road crossing, and provide the hikers with food, battery banks and car rides into town.
“The days where you’re walking along and you think that you’re going to have Ramen noodles for dinner and suddenly somebody’s cooking you a hamburger, those are probably some of the best days,” Mills said.
Mills has found backpackers to be a tight-knit and “wonderful” community.
“I think the biggest thing that was a surprise for me on the trail was … you go out there to be alone and to find peace in your mind or whatever, and then you end up meeting so many wonderful people that you didn’t really expect,” she said.
Mills saw people from ages 10–71 on the AT, all encountering the same physical, emotional and mental hurdles.
“I don’t have necessarily anything in common with a 10-year-old girl,” Mills said. “I don’t necessarily have anything in common with a 71-year-old woman. But everyone sitting around the fire that night went through the same exact challenges that day. There was no path that was more shallow or not a mountain that wasn’t as steep to make it a little bit easier for the 10-year-old or the 71-year-old. … And there’s something special about sitting around a fire that night, camped out with people you just met out there.”
Mills wishes that everyone could complete a through-hike, as the trail teaches you so much.
“You learn so much more about yourself and how you handle situations,” Mills said. “After through-hiking, I was like, 'Man, if I can do that, I can do anything.'”
Mills doesn’t think there’s anything quite like rebooting in nature.
“When you get out there, you’re kind of alone with your mind,” she said. “You don’t have Facebook, you don’t necessarily have somebody to call and talk to, and so you’re really alone with your thoughts. And sometimes you might find things that you thought you had worked through in your mind, but you realize that you just kind of pushed them away with everyday life. And sometimes the things that you don’t want to think about pop up in your head first. It allows you to work through that stuff, and I think that that’s good. My mind was very noisy on the AT, and then once I got on the PCT, it was a little quieter.”
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People have asked Mills if recording so much of her journey takes away from the experience. For her, it doesn't because stopping to film something makes her appreciate it.
“I look at it, but it makes me stop,” Mills said. “And I make a point before I snap anything with the camera, I look at it with my eyes first.”
Up to this point, Mills has filmed all her videos on the trail with her phone. Through-hikers typically stop at a town every week or so to get food or recharge batteries. At these stops, Mills can get service to upload her videos. She typically sends them to a second person who edits and posts them for her.
Mills says that backpacking YouTube channels have been growing, and she thinks her channel has influenced others to create their own.
“I think more and more people aren’t necessarily doing so much the informational stuff after the trail, but there are definitely a lot that are vlogging while they hike,” she said. “I wasn’t the first one, but I think I was the first one that stayed consistent for over a year or two.”
Mills thinks her subscribers and viewers consist of people planning to through-hike who are looking for more information and people who dream of through-hiking but don’t make it a priority, don’t have a current lifestyle that allows them to pursue it or are intimidated to start.
“Just having a place, like an outlet of information where people can learn about it, I think gives them the confidence to do it,” Mills said. “So I think maybe some people just enjoy seeing stuff that they can’t get out and do, and then some enjoy actually learning.”
After completing the Triple Crown, Mills isn’t certain what she’ll do next but is considering an international trail.
Through-hiking has made Mills appreciate everyday comforts most people take for granted, she said, and she feels that the trail opens people’s eyes to what’s really important in life.
“Before, I would say that comfort came from things, possessions,” she said. “But more and more in the past three years, it’s been less about possessions and more about experiences and memories and seeing things, adventures.”
Mills will likely start posting her CDT videos toward the end of April.
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